Chad Aldeman

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Background: Chad Aldeman is a principal at Bellwether Education Partners, where he has worked on the Policy and Thought Leadership team since 2012, advising clients and writing on teacher preparation, teacher evaluation, and college- and career-readiness. He also serves as editor for TeacherPensions.org. Previously, Chad was a policy advisor in the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development at the U.S. Department of Education, where he worked on ESEA waivers, teacher preparation, and the Teacher Incentive Fund. Prior to joining the Department, Chad was a policy analyst with Education Sector. He has published reports on state higher education accountability systems, the potential of improving high school accountability by incorporating outcomes data, the school choice process in New York City and Boston, teacher pensions, teacher and principal evaluations, teacher salary schedules, and teacher preparation. His work has been featured in the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, InsideHigherEd, Newsday, and the Des Moines Register. Chad holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Iowa and a master’s of public policy degree from the College of William and Mary.

Experience at Bellwether: policy research and analysis, long- and short-form writing, strategic advising

Sample clients: Rhode Island Department of Education, ACT, Stand for Children, the Joyce Foundation, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation

Why I do this work: I’ve been passionate about education since reading Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities. I believe that luck—where you’re born or which family you’re born into—has a strong affect on educational opportunities, and I want to make sure schools do everything they can to address those inequities.

Recent Media

The way we evaluate American schools is outdated. We too often identify “low-performing” schools by where students end up at the end of the year, while ignoring how much progress they made in that time.